A three-building office complex in Lake Forest that holds the headquarters of Del Taco Holdings Inc. has been sold to a local investment group.
An affiliate of Aliso Viejo-based CT Realty recently closed on the purchase of Palm Terrace, which is on Commercentre Drive near the Baker Ranch residential development.
The two-story buildings total about 156,000 square feet and sold for about $30 million, or nearly $195 per square foot.
The seller was an affiliate of LaSalle Investment Management, which paid a reported $39.5 million for the buildings in 2006.
Other similar buildings in Lake Forest and Foothill Ranch that were bought by Palo Alto-based investor Menlo Equities sold earlier this year for about $175 per square foot but had higher vacancy rates.
Del Taco, whose acquisition by Chicago-based blank-check company Levy Acquisition Corp. is scheduled to close this month, occupies the majority of one of the buildings.
The company, Orange County’s fourth largest restaurant chain by sales, plans to keep its headquarters local following the sale to Levy and could expand into more space at Palm Terrace, CT Realty officials said.
Palm Terrace’s buildings are about 86% leased, according to CoStar records.
The deal is CT Realty’s first big local office purchase in several years. The company has recently focused most of its attention on industrial investments.
Other buildings it owns in the area include 20 Icon, a 100,000-square-foot industrial building in Lake Forest that it bought last year.
Hidden Canyon Sales
Sales at Hidden Canyon in Irvine, home to some of the most expensive new houses in Orange County, continue to be strong, to the tune of $175 million, according to the project’s builder.
The 250-home project near the intersection of Laguna Canyon Road and Lake Forest Drive opened for sales in early February.
It’s overseen by Horsham, Pa.-based homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. and has two product lines for sale. Homes of one product line, called Capri, are priced at about $2.3 million. The other, Marbella, has prices closer to $3 million.
Homes have from about 4,000 square feet to nearly 5,500 square feet.
In the three months since it opened, “we have taken 65 agreements averaging about $2.7 million,” Toll Bros. Chief Executive Doug Yearley told investors in late May following the company’s latest quarterly earnings announcement.
Toll Bros.’ other big Orange County project in Baker Ranch also is seeing good sales, at a lower price point.
“We have taken 26 deposits in the past month averaging about $1 million,” Yearley said.
“California demand remains very strong,” said Yeardley, whose company’s homes tend to be geared toward move-up and luxury home buyers. “Our communities there accounted for roughly 30% of the value of signed contracts this past quarter as we enjoyed pricing power across both Northern and Southern California.”
Retail Growth
Add another property to the growing retail portfolio of Newport Beach-based JH Real Estate Partners Inc.
The real estate investor recently closed on the purchase of NoHo Commons retail center, a 65,000-square-foot property in North Hollywood.
The center sold for about $43 million, or about $681 per square foot, according to property records.
It opened in 2004 and has been described as one of the first mixed-use, transit-oriented developments in Los Angeles.
It last traded hands in 2007 when a venture between Redwood Partners Inc. in Laguna Beach and San Francisco-based Rockwood Capital LLC paid $30.5 million for it.
It is JH Real Estate’s second big acquisition in Los Angeles County in the past few weeks.
It closed on the $33 million purchase of Hawaiian Gardens Town Center in early May. That center is a 124,645-square-foot, grocery-anchored center about a half-mile east of 605 Carson Blvd. near the Orange-L.A. county line.
The company announced a switch in strategy last year, turning its attention to retail purchases rather than apartment deals, which had historically been its largest investment category.
In January it sold 14 apartment complexes in Los Angeles and San Diego counties and the Inland Empire for a combined $482 million.
